MUCH OF the discussion about the Raiders deal in the Oakland mayoral race has focused on what went wrong in 1995. These facts are pretty well established: Elected officials relied on wildly optimistic projections about ticket demand and put no cost ceiling on the stadium reconstruction.

Alameda County Supervisor Mary King and Councilman Ignacio De La Fuente, two supporters of the deal who are running for mayor, have had to answer for their votes at every candidates' forum. Their opponents are having a field day. What has been absent in much of the fray has been much meaningful debate about how to minimize the losses.

The most dangerous illusion -- one promoted by King and De La Fuente -- is that the numbers might magically improve if the Raiders started winning. The fact is, the deal is fundamentally flawed, and a Raider winning streak would probably help mostly in the sale of single-game tickets -- not the long-term personal seat licenses and club seats that help repay the public debt.

Now, at the prodding of City Manager Robert Bobb, there are rumblings that the various parties may finally be willing to get together. Here's what needs to be done:

As a starting point of compromise, the city and county should agree to drop their lawsuit against the Raiders. The team, in return, should withdraw its veto over the sale of naming rights to the Coliseum and make a public pledge to stay through the remaining 13 years of its lease. We've just put at least $1 million a year into a shared pool and saved tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of dollars in future legal fees.

Next step. Redo the terms of the seat licenses to make them permanent. The current scheme -- which has the licenses expiring in 2005 -- makes them a difficult sale in any instance, and virtually impossible when the team is struggling, as it has been. More than 22,000 remain unsold.

Once the PSLs were permanent (similar to the approach of the Giants' "charter seats" for Pac Bell Park) the two sides could work out a compromise to meet what now are conflicting goals -- the Raiders want to fill the unsold seats through single-game or partial-season packages, while the debt-saddled governments need a secondary revenue stream. Our suggestion would be to put a special tax -- say, $10 a seat -- on tickets not covered by PSLs, and direct every cent to bond repayment.

As we have said before, local governments do not belong in the business of marketing football tickets. The current joint decision-making arrangement has produced nothing but stalemates; once the new structure is set, the responsibility for selling tickets should rest with the Raiders.

The next mayor of Oakland should be ready to rework the Raider deal so that he or she will have more money -- and more time -- to spend on other issues facing the city.